The Aftermath
by XsaekostarX
Summary: "I'm not going to let your fire burn out, Katniss," Finnick said, his voice was soft and sincere. I looked into his impossibly green eyes and saw the same sadness I felt, reflected in his eyes. He understood when no one else did, when no one else could. Oneshot.


_The End That Marks the Beginning_

I look at Finnick. We're the only ones left. The only ones. Everyone else is dead.

Boggs.

Cressida.

Pollux.

…

_Gale._

_Peeta._

_Prim._

Gods, it _hurts_. How can they all be gone? How could they leave me? The war is over. The rebels won. Coin is dead, so the new Hunger Games: Capitol Edition has been overruled since both Coin's and my own vote are discounted.

Has any of it really been worth it? I'm on the hovercraft back to the painful, ash pile that used to be my home. My mother isn't returning either. I know why she isn't coming back, but that doesn't stop me from hating her for it. She has abandoned me again.

She left me with Haymitch, who is just as broken as I am. Nothing matters; it really feels as if everything, every life spent, every second that passed, has been wasted. I just feel so numb, as if I have no place in the world without them.

Gale, my hunting partner. Who else will be there to watch my back?

Peeta, my companion. Who else always knows the right words? Who else understands the horror of the games like he did? Who else will I fall in love with?

Prim, my sister. Who else will be there for my mother? Cry for the dying baby bird? Who else will be happy to have a diseased goat and a mangy cat?

Who else, other than those people, will love me unconditionally?

No one.

The aching starts in my chest again. It's strange, to be so numb for so long, and yet, just thinking about those three gives me incredible pain. It's almost crippling. I glance over at Finnick's completely vacant expression. I looked like that, and I probably still do. That haunted look. I know what it means. It means you lost something. Someone important.

I wish it could be the will to live that I lost. But wishes don't come true, and my will to survive overrides everything else in the end. It's almost sickening that I didn't... couldn't bring myself to end my life. To be with the people who truly care for me.

I wonder if this is something all victors went though. Whether it's a curse. Whether all victors are destined to lose whoever they care about in some twisted kind of karma.

I ponder the ache in my chest. It never really stops Not completely anyway. It's always there, like a distant hum, but sometimes I become too distracted to notice. The distractions usually come in waking nightmares.

The waking nightmares are vivid flashbacks to all kinds of horrible things. Snow's face and his puffy lips coated with the blood he was coughing up. Prim's broken body. Gale's pained face as the Peacekeepers dragged him away. Peeta's tormented expression as he scratched his own face to ribbons before finally swallowing the nightlock.

Those images are always there, always in the back of my mind.

My own face is plastered all over the Capitol. I am the symbol of the organization that is no better than the government it opposes. It sickens me. I was played so well, and it will be me that will be hated.

And I deserve it.

I finally understand why so many victors use things like morphling or succumb to alcoholism. It's just so tempting to be able to escape from my own head, from those images that play on an endless loop and the guilt that accompanies it.

The pain is nearly overwhelming. It just consumes you. I remember crying into someone's chest. I cried for hours, I cried for everything and anything.

The doctors said that it was therapeutic but it did not help. I simply wore myself down even more. The pain is always there, like an inescapable memory.

I just want to escape.

I just want to leave it all behind.

But I know I can't. I know my deeds will haunt me forever. I know that their deaths will forever hang over my head. I know I should just grieve and move on.

I know it. I know it! I KNOW IT! And yet, I still can't manage it.

That's why I want to leave, to escape. I will take any option available just to get some kind of release from this vicious cycle.

I want there to be an end. An end to this torture. An end to the pain.

I move closer to Finnick, begging with my eyes for some kind of comfort. He wraps his arm around me, and I break, again. As I sob into his chest, I'm pretty sure our tears start to mingle.

"I'm not going to let your fire burn out, Katniss," Finnick said, his voice cracking. I looked into his impossibly green eyes and saw the same sadness I felt, reflected in his eyes. He understood when no one else did, when no one else could.

I believed him, and in that moment I realised that the embers of my fire were still burning away under all the pain and grief, and perhaps, with a little help and time, they might once be fanned back into flames.


End file.
